Major journal publishes scientific attack on Quebec
Document Tools
Related Links
Tim Takaro, 778.782.7186, ttakaro@sfu.ca
Carol Thorbes, PAMR, 778.782.3035, cthorbes@sfu.ca
A letter damning Quebec’s asbestos exports and signed by more than 100 scientists from 28 countries, including Simon Fraser University health researcher Tim Takaro, has been published in a prestigious academic journal for the first time.
The letter to Quebec premier Jean Charest aims to end Canada’s asbestos exports and appears in the current issue of International Journal of Occupational Environmental Health (IJOEH).
Canadian and international law classify asbestos as a carcinogen and the World Health Organization is calling for its ban.
Citing 15 published reports by Quebec’s public health institute to support its charge, the letter accuses Charest’s government of having a hypocritical stance on its chrysotile asbestos exports.
The letter notes that Quebec supports its asbestos industry’s exports to developing nations even though the province has stopped using asbestos domestically and is pulling it out of public buildings:
“In Quebec itself, exposure to asbestos is the single biggest cause of worker death...Your government is spending millions of dollars to remove chrysotile asbestos and other forms of asbestos..., while at the same time exporting it to developing countries and telling them it is safe. This seems to represent a high level of hypocrisy.”
The letter’s authors demand that Charest “end Quebec’s export of asbestos, to stop funding the Chrysotile Institute, to support the listing of chrysotile asbestos under the UN Rotterdam Convention, to assist the last 340 asbestos miners and their community with economic diversification, and to address the asbestos disease epidemic in Quebec.”
Anti-asbestos lobbyists credit a similar letter written by Takaro last year to federal Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff with getting the party to reverse its support of Quebec’s asbestos exports. Several Canadian scientists lent supportive signatures to that letter.
Canada’s $100-million-a-year asbestos industry exists primarily in Thetford Mines, Quebec, home to the country’s last operational mine.
—30—